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What grinded my gears this time was the vehement insistence MLP should be slice of life, and that worldbuilding comes from adventure, and that that shouldn’t be what the show is about. Not only do I personally feel that’s wrong, because I’d have been much less interested myself, but I think it also fails to grasp the mindset the show set out to break with. This idea that girls must be spoonfed social interaction slice-of-life stories until their tastebuds go numb. That girls cannot appreciate action, suspense and adventure. Going on exciting, magical adventures in a world of fantasy, with monsters and villains to defeat is a boys thing, and not for girls. Maybe it’s cliché to invoke Lauren Faust ten years down the road, but wasn’t she trying to recapture the parts of Gen 1 that actually broke this mold and appealed to her, as a woman?
And isn’t that what experience tells us is what cartoons should do? I mean, lots of boys (and tomboys) will recount their enjoyment of Batman, Transformers, Power Rangers. Inbetween you may have some overlap for gender neutral series like Ducktales and the Smurfs. But nobody, not even girls, look back fondly at a Barbie series, or the now almost-forgotten Maple Town (I actually kinda liked that, but it’s got nothing on Rescue Rangers or Animals of Farthing Wood). Slice of life might have an important role to play, even within normally adventure oriented series. But an all SoL series is dull and forgettable.
And isn’t that what experience tells us is what cartoons should do? I mean, lots of boys (and tomboys) will recount their enjoyment of Batman, Transformers, Power Rangers. Inbetween you may have some overlap for gender neutral series like Ducktales and the Smurfs. But nobody, not even girls, look back fondly at a Barbie series, or the now almost-forgotten Maple Town (I actually kinda liked that, but it’s got nothing on Rescue Rangers or Animals of Farthing Wood). Slice of life might have an important role to play, even within normally adventure oriented series. But an all SoL series is dull and forgettable.